ABC News brings multi-streaming viewing to Apple TV

Getting your news fix without watching hours of talking heads can be a challenge now in the digital era. To help viewers out, ABC News is giving Apple TV owners a new feature that lets you watch multiple streams at once.

Viewers can choose to have two streams playing side-by-side. Or you can go hardcore and have 4 different channels on the same screen.

The new feature makes ABC News the first major news network to offer simultaneous streaming on Apple TV. Starting at launch viewers will have a dozen different live streams to choose from on the bottom row of the screen.

ABC’s new feature may seem odd, considering you usually need to listen to the audio on a stream to know what’s going on. According to ABC News VP of product development, Doug Vance, the feature will help news junkies keep their eye out for developing stories.

“During periods of breaking news, there are often multiple story threads and video sources being surfaced simultaneously – the multistream experience helps our users keep an eye on all of the developments without missing a beat,” Vance explained.

To activate the feature, click on the Live Streams section in the ABC News app. You can then scroll through the different channels options and click the ones you want to watch side-by-side.

Most of the channels are created by the ABC News team, but there are a few that are run by affiliate networks. Multi-stream viewing should roll out to Apple TV owners soon through an app update.